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talk i'm peter lavelle syria a civil war within and the deadly reality of seeing this conflict spill over into the entire region because much of the blame for the current situation lay with foreign countries seeing an opportunity to live in enemy in damascus if so what are the unintended consequences. if you. start to. talk to syria turkey tinderbox i'm joined by mark almond in london he is a modern history lecturer at the university of oxford also in london we have id he is an expert on turkey and an associate fellow at chapman house and in tampa we cross to my geographic day he is an iranian syrian expert and visiting scholar at the university of california santa barbara ok mark if i go to you first in london we're told from turkey the worst case scenario is being played out of course that means war between the two countries how close are we to that or is that just rhetoric right now. well i think when you can say it's the worst as we know from

shakespeare the worst is not yet and i'm afraid i think things could get a great deal worse the illusion is perhaps that if a powerful military state like turkey intervened it would produce a collapse of this regime quickly and this would then produce peace i'm not so sure that would happen i think there are complications yes the turkish army forces much more powerful than a syrian army that is sorely stretched fighting a rebellion but on the other hand whether you would pacify the country or simply produce new tensions including tensions with after all the old imperial part turkey i think is really open to question and if we think about past presidents thirty years ago the israelis entered lebanon to suppress the p.l.o. they had yet been where they were and they were greeted by people in the south liberators from the p.l.o. from the palestinians who were disliked by the shirts but a few months later the sharks decided they didn't like the israeli liberators and that runs to the present day so there's always a danger that you can intervene to act as a liberator only to discover that the people who you liberated turned out not to be

grateful ok i'd like to talk about that and the nato element a little bit later further do you think that the turks really want to go this far or do you think they're going to have their western allies backing them up ok empty rhetoric again even though we do have shells going over the border the turkish public opinion according to recent opinion polls is increasingly against their government's syria policy at the same time also i think the turkish government does not want to enter into the syrian quagmire at least or get militarily involved unless it's a washington and principle here washington is behind them and so far we can see a an incredible reticence in washington not to get involved in the in the civil war in syria ok but if i could stay with you i mean turkey is very much involved in this civil war it has an open border we have people going back and forth is playing an active role in the civil war. and there is no doubt that turkey is involved

turkey has is hosting the free syrian army there are also reports that. that money weapons are being funneled through turkey to the syrian armed opposition sort turkey is in the thick of things turkey has been trying to unify a very very fragmented syrian opposition so far too little success but sending troops turkish troops over the border into syria is a whole different dimension ok maggie if i go to you in tampa do you think the syrians want the turks to blink because they know nato doesn't really want to get involved in this at least overtly. to bluff well. yeah that's a good question peter let me just go back to your previous question i would agree with your friend with with the other guests from turkey i think syria is some sort of potential vietnam for turkey i don't think their key would want to intervene in syria militarily for now at least because intervening in syria they would get

turkey sucked into the syria sucked into a sectarian war in syria and that would backlash in turkey because of the issue of the kurds might do bill against turkey my unify with the kurds in syria and also there would be a proxy war between iran we should also bring iran into the topic because there would be iran has a heart a large stake inside syria and they will be saudi also intervenes and there is an international superpowers who are backing the said the regime so i don't think turkey now is ready to enter remit to in syria and as your guest said i think. i don't think the public opinion turkey are in favor of any war. launching a. syria mark how did we get to this point here in the broader picture because a year and a half ago turkey had almost an idyllic foreign policy it didn't really have a lot of promise of all it with a lot of people at all maybe the kurds but everybody else that had a pretty reasonable foreign policy now has the worst foreign policy in the region.

you know it's a peculiar situation that the government suddenly and impulsively stood on its head and somersaulted into radical opposition to governments that it had previously cultivated the prime minister mr had received a prize from gadhafi promoting human rights seem to be trying to edge nuclear towards better relations with the outside world through economic and diplomatic contacts similarly with syria then that came this dramatic shift and i think a big problem for the turkish government is that it expected the wave of revolution to spread very quickly and largely peacefully in a sense what happened in tunisia and egypt would carry on with or libya took a long time to resolve if it's resolved now and of course syria has turned out to be a much tougher much crack for the reasons of your contributors will so discussed there are deep rooted rivalries there isn't a clash simply between a narrow dictatorship and the people the people in syria are divided and some of that division spreads over the borders not just kurds remember we often talk about assad's regime being an alawite based regime where there are many more levies in

turkey than in syria and one problem for the turkish government i think is any intervention and he threaten intervention even begins to bring to the surface sectarian divisions which really have been silent inside turkey for seventy years and so there is a danger leaving inside turkey itself you begin to get a sunni our we clash should begin to clash i want to talk about the sectarian differences a little bit later for the you know the worst case scenario for me is that everyone's given up on syria now it is just a proxy war and that means it could turn into another lebanon ok because there doesn't seem to be any will on the part of the rebels to negotiate they've given up on that they just want you know as much violence and see who wins hopefully with a western intervention of some form that's the worst case scenario i think there is a there there is even a even more worse scenario and that's the fact that if outside powers start really funneling weapons and and materiel not only make the argument why are they are

ready are doing that. still it looks limited but if for example mitt romney becomes president the united states and he stated yesterday very clearly that the united states will be actively should he become president he will be actively providing weapons to the syrian sunni armed groups then things i think will get a lot worse because then i don't think moscow will be side and they will be providing further weaponry or more and more sophisticated weaponry to the assad regime and similarly iran will not sit quiet and perhaps even iraq so so far to a certain extent the syria conflict has been contained somewhat like lebanon was in the in the one nine hundred eighty s. but should the different parties really get far more active in the conflict and i think it could get a lot worse not just for syria but for the neighbors including turkey ok matthew what do you think about that because there's a plethora of information that you have the saudis and the kuwaitis they're full blast you doing as much as they can to help the rebels ok is it making the

situation worse or better i think i know your answer go ahead well. well i think the syrian case i would i would argue that here is very similar to lebanon but with syria is very complicated and the reason is that there are three concentric forces of conflict at the same time that are working for first we have the domestic opposition groups there are fighting there is. none of them can defeat the other one and then we have the regional cold war between iran as you mentioned saudi arabia and the arab gulf states. and also some religious you can say called war between shias and so on islam and then we have on the international level also the. between russia china and other side the united states france and. germany and other european countries so i

think because of these three levels you see that it's resolving the crisis in syria is very very complicated get much if i could say with you but i mean how many people in syria want to resolve and i'm looking at the rebels ok they've walked away from the goshi ations. well i think we can say that majority of syrian people want the they're looking for a peaceful transition and. we way beyond that now don't you agree i'm i'm i'm talking with i'm talking about ordinary people but let me say when when we have a one thousand nine hundred one conflict definitely when there is violence when there is weapon is used by of. by by both sides or first it was initiated by the regime i think the you would have some sort of radicalized group or islamist group or coming into into into the field in any way i think. while

the when there is instability you will see that jihad is coming inside or other group trying to spoil the situation and i think that probably you are referring to those limited group but i think we can generalize that to all ordinary syrian people who are who really just want a peaceful transition they want stability inside the country and they want to democratic country and they want to elect their own leader and their own government and they they want to to to have their own. way way way from that mark before we go to the break here has the international community the major powers given up on syria is as we know it today is a just a proxy now. well it is a proxy conflict certainly and the other problem is that the international community doesn't exist we have radically opposed views essentially russia and trying to what i call the conservative countries who don't want. to forced a revolution in the west not least in our states we have radical voices who are from this one sells a conservative but who really want to turn over the middle east in cart and see

what comes calling out from underneath whether it will be better on poland because these great powers are a long way away and so they can mess up without actually having state responsibility the big problem for countries like turkey jordan iran and so on is if this does descend into a regional conflict they home walk away they are next door all right gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that show break we'll continue our discussion on syria's civil war the state authority. to. download the official ati up location to cell phone choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from matsushita t.v.'s no required to watch on

t.v. all you need is your mobile device to watch ati any time any of. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

is easy feat it's. easy. to meet. will.

welcome back across documents to mind you were talking about how the syrian conflict is spilling over into the region. and. how can my to go back to fighting in in london you know i find it really quite curious if not hypocritical that a lot of western media criticizes syria for violating turkey's that territorial

sovereignty but it's serious territory and sovereignty is being violated all the time but no one likes to talk about that go ahead. i think it's quite normal in the middle east to have double and triple standards but that's something usual in the case of for example turkey turkey normally complained that the kurdistan workers party of the peak a key which is currently located in northern in the mountains of northern iraq infiltrate into turkey and used to complain about that to iraq and especially the kurdish leadership quite substantially. now we see that now we see that turkey is hosting the free syrian army and helping them to carry out attacks inside syria against the assad regime so we always see this double standard take place in the region that is normal and that's to be expected of our the should it should american and western foreign policy be based on double and triple standards if you think it's true and i agree with you. i think that foreign policy is based on

national strategic interests and what the united states and europe are doing is in their strategic interest similarly russia is acting in its strategic interest and china. and the other powers around the world so what matters national strategic interests and there really are two i agree with you wondering what is saudi arabia really is national interest here explain to me the spread jihad and i don't think that. i think that there is increasingly a secretary and dimension to foreign policy in the region whether it's turkey and its regional arab allies that's that's quite that's quite evident but each country acts in its strategic interests unfortunately strategic interests are clashing and we're seeing the consequences in syria ok imagine what you think about that ok who's national interests are being served here ok what are american national interests here. well. i mean the one with the only thing about. talking there is two things i think there is that when talking about just going

back to the turkey and talk about there is national honor and there is national interest i mean turkey is a national honor is there when it's it's let's say attacked by syria when his jet was shot down by syria it want to show that it's protecting its own people and it will send its army to the to the war it was very and there is national interest there is a way in. if you want to if they intervene in syria and if the syria turned into a. protracted or longer a civil war or for years then they would have to take responsibility for for that and there is also. i would mention there is also the economic dimension to this if if if turkey intervene in syria and that would damages economy that might draw it spoil it sort of on their arab street also so i think the dimension of internet national interest sometimes coalesce with the national honor of the country

a good market well how much is the rand playing in this here i mean it would be united states and saudi arabia again syria is a proxy it's a it's a way to get something done ok they don't care about the syrian people i'm sorry they don't. well they have their own interests and one aspect is if you like the religious ideological common interests that you have a shiite crescent if you are running from lebanon through syria particularly into iraq and then on to iran and also down to places like bahrain and east and saudi arabia and there is a kind of religious civil war it's not just a war between democrats and it but it is also sunni shia conflict and therefore there is the danger of a wider war and i think iraq is in some ways even more sensitive here the new iran iraq is after all the funnel for any serious hope that goes from iran through to syria iraq as the common border has common a space and we have this irony the united states actually george bush did produce democracy in iraq it's just that sixty percent of iraqis didn't vote for george

bush or for that matter barack obama wanted it and now we see the very same people who are fighting against the americans are actually helping to organize both bombings in baghdad and other parts of iraq but also of course hoping the and t. assad forces fight the fight and win a senate hearing back to this very same place in the world of the afghanistan in the one nine hundred eighty s. i think more than lebanon even afghanistan is the representative of a proxy war the same kind of jihadi saudi funded and equipped people that the americans brought into afghanistan their children are going to syria and i've heard so turkey for instance is becoming the pakistan of this war and that's not a very happy position for turkey to be from going from encounter that for the e.u. to coming with pakistan on the edge of the ok mark if i can speak with you i mean just to be clear here saudi arabia is an export democracy now ok so they're not importing it either. but what do you think about that i mean the regional dynamics here because if i'm intending consequences they rock lebanon i mean they're being

pulled into this they don't want to be but they are not. no doubt there are regional consequences but i do detect a slight difference between the one nine hundred eighty s. the era of of the the war in afghanistan and lebanon and today i think today you can see that arabs generally are exhausted with all this conflict arab public opinion in general maybe against at the assad regime but is not in favor of any military involvement in syria similarly in turkey the turkish public opinion is deeply against military involvement in syria so we don't see that kind of excitement or that kind. of friends of syria saying assad must go ok it's almost the cheer you're hearing right now how do you know there is a difference here between what the street believes i think and certain vested interests. i think that we look we have to distinguish two things one is diplomatic condemnation and actually taking active policies to depose the assad regime beyond

economic sanctions and diplomatic condemnation we don't see western powers really doing much to overthrow the assad regime in addition i would also add that israel is not preoccupied with syria at all it's mostly preoccupied with the iranian nuclear program you barely hear any any comments from the israeli government on the current events in syria ok or maybe they're just preoccupied with the round my did what do you think about that i mean even if assad goes what changes in syria and no one ever talks about that scenario go ahead i think the one of the important is the regional aspect if we have a proxy war in syria this is the war scenario i think iran is a master full of making proxies in countries it made the proxy in lebanon when there was a civil war in lebanon we had has will it create a proxy in iraq when there was an instability and may and i think if there would be some sort of instability decentralized garman in syria iran definitely would make

a proxy with their alloyed to inside syria and i think that's their war scenario that we can see but again back to your question that about what would happen if it goes i think first we have we know that this regime has lost its legitimacy and its credibility so there is no other everybody in the seriously keep that in mind gentlemen not everybody in syria feels that way go ahead. all i can argue that a majority of the people they want a more democratic system of governance i mean if they're afraid of saying they're all in a guarantee that there's a civil war it's pretty hard to figure out what public opinion is mark you said you want to jump in and mention something about israel go right ahead. well i think the point that israel's been rather quiet on this is quite revealing because after all the regime hasn't been a big problem for the israelis not since one thousand nine hundred two where as we've seen with egypt the change in egypt has brought big problems on the border and it's not impossible to imagine that from the point where this really is at any

rate a more muslim brotherhood influence regime little in the jihadi type regime in damascus could be a much bigger problem and could therefore be much more destabilizing element one question is here we're discussing two different examine what is in the interests of international peace and what is in the interests of notional majority in syria what they would like to have those who say we don't really know what syrians want because the violence means that basically the people doing the fighting are the people who will decide who wins will decide what the future is going to be and sadly in this kind of civil war it happened endlessly throughout history the women's decide what the people want from the people if they're wise back the will by the who is willing in this civil war internally and externally in your skull scorecard that go ahead i would say it's actually a stalemate the assad regime is unable to completely defeat the. sunni armed opposition on the other hand the sunni armed opposition is unable to. to overthrow

assad at the same time all we can see that moscow is keeping washington in check and we can see also regionally that saudi arabia egypt and qatar and turkey are are keeping iran in check and vice versa so it's essentially a stalemate i think that this conflict looks likely to drag on until exhaustion comes into play ok if i do so you're saying the biggest losers so far are the syrian people because outside forces are arming rebels. i think that the biggest losers are the arabs in general the arabs have been suffering from repeated wars in the region from the from from the one nine hundred eighty s. the lebanese civil war the iraq the iraq war the iraqi wars in the one nine hundred ninety s. then and now we have this so the arabs are continuously being undermined by these regional conflicts undermining their prospects for democracy for a forum for economic prosperity and until these regional war stop the arabs will

continue to suffer not just the syrians but also the lebanese the iraqis now the turks and the arabs more generally mind you what's the next step in your mind where should it go because the should be it can only again to go. to go negotiate with magic. i think one of the most important things first we have to really create some humanitarian corridors to have to create some bigger a few g. camps in the eleven hour or in jordan or in turkey just to a lot of the people who are fleeing syria they're fleeing the violence just to be able to have a shelter i think this is the first thing that we have. to do and then i think the here turkey can play important role in making good trying to convince their opposition groups unify the opposition groups to have a consistency miss it and then to reach an agreement to have some sort of

transitional government to. step aside but this is a. morning of your program twenty seconds go ahead. i refer to the international community took a lost its opportunity to be only spoke with a mediator and now unfortunately we have dishonest brokers supplies and if you like the indifferent and the balance between those is going to decide who wins on the ground very depressing many thanks today to my guests in london and in tampa and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember cross talk. any.

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